A Study of China's Medical Care Price Reform in the Framework of New Medical System Reform

On April 6(th), 2009, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council promulgated "Opinions on Deepening the Health Care System Reform". This official document outlined a scheme of so-called new medical system reform, aimed at providing basic universal medical care. However, the specific policy measures, how to deepen the reform of medical care prices according to the guidelines and basic principles of this official document, have not been developed. This paper makes a study of China's medical care price reform in the framework of new medical system reform. At first, it analyzes the problems of China's medical care prices. Second, it focuses on the causes for unreasonable medical care prices. In the end, in the framework of new medical system reform it gives policy suggestions for reforming China's medical care prices such as gradually improving compensation mechanism of public hospitals, speeding up the adjustment of medical care prices, reforming the pricing mechanism of medical services, and accelerating the construction of the basic medical security system, etc.